Bill Franks's Blog: Analytics Matters, page 10

Making Big Data Actionable: How Data Visualization and Other Tools Change the Game

Bill Franks, an IIA faculty member and Chief Analytics Officer for Teradata, was recently featured in a webinar discussing approaches to making big data more actionable and profitable by utilizing data visualization tools and strategies. The talk highlighted the important opportunities and level of insight that big data and analytics can provide organizations and shared how visualization tools can better support decision making and lead to discovery of new insights.

Fund Portfolios, Not Projects To Enable Innovative Analytics

Pursuing innovative analytics through a portfolio funding model isn’t about removing accountability or financial discipline. It is about applying accountability and financial discipline in a way that accounts for the realities of the situation. It is also about providing leeway to the analysts tasked with discovery and innovation to truly try new approaches to improving a business through analytics.

Quick, Invest In This CBIMBDMLAAS Company!

Did I get your attention? Good! I know that CBIMBDMLAAS is a mouthful, but I am confident that I will be able to round up some funding pretty easily for my new company that will be focused on the CBIMBDMLAAS space. Before I reveal the exciting focus of this investment friendly business idea, let me digress a bit.

We are living in a period where certain buzz words are repeated again and again. While there are always buzz words being repeated at any point in time, it seems that there are more bu...

When Machine Learning Isn’t Learning

Terms come in and out of vogue on a regular basis. In recent years, the use of the term Machine Learning has surged. What I struggle with is that many traditional data mining and statistical functions are being folded underneath the machine learning umbrella. There is no harm in this except that I don’t think that the general community understands that, in many cases, traditional algorithms are just getting a new label with a lot of hype and buzz appeal. Simply classifying algorithms in the m...

Big Data’s Big Flip-Flop

It wasn’t too long ago that many people espoused the decline, if not death, of the SQL language and relational database technology in general. As a level set, remember that relational technology stores data into rows and columns and that the way to access relational data is through Structured Query Language (SQL). For a couple of years, there was a full frontal assault on relational approaches from the Hadoop and non-relational crowds. The overhead of placing data into pre-defined rows and co...

Hacked by the Internet of Things

One of the fastest rising trends today is the Internet of Things (IOT). For those who don’t know, the Internet of Things refers to the vast network of connected devices that communicate with each other to relay information. That information is usually captured by sensors. As sensors and transmitters become cheaper, more and more everyday items are becoming part of the IOT.

The IOT has a lot of promise. The data it generates can provide insights into many aspects of our lives that haven’t had d...

Analytics Matters!

As we enter 2014, we are in the middle of a fundamental transformation in the way businesses view analytics. Analytics are now seen as core to a business. Analytics matters. I am extremely pleased to see this happen and that people like me no longer have to fight to make the value of analytics visible. We are just starting to see analytics used as the basis for new products and revenue streams. The breadth of decisions analytics support is increasing every day. The next few years are going to...

Perfect Information Doesn’t Equal Perfect Predictions

Many organizations attempt to achieve “data nirvana” by having 100% complete information for any given business decision. In the customer analytics space, this is sometimes referred to as a “360 degree view of the customer.” However, we really never know everything about our customers. What we call a 360 degree view is really just the most complete view we have at any given time. All of the information we are missing must be inferred or assumed through analytics. The more complete our picture...

Big Data and the Analytics Arms Race

You think big data is big today? Just wait until next year…or the year after that…or the year after that. It is growing exponentially. Whatever seems big now will likely seem relatively small just a short time from now. My inner analytics geek is thrilled when several times per week I see an article or have a discussion that calls my attention to yet another company or industry with yet another source of data growing explosively. It is just amazing how quickly these sources of data are growin...

Analytic Teams Are Rapidly Reaching Critical Mass

Over the past year, I have seen a very positive and encouraging shift in my discussions with organizations about the analytic talent that they employ. More and more discussions are about how to best structure an analytics organization as many companies have now found themselves with enough analytic professionals to make it necessary to figure out how to make the most of them. The speed of the shift from “should we hire anyone?” to “how do I organize all these people?” has surprised me. We are...